“Fuck!”
I quickly pulled her upright and flipped her over my back, pushing my shoulder into her diaphragm. Her mouth dropped open and water released from her lungs, pouring out of her mouth. I flipped her over onto her back and tilted her head to open her airway, checking her mouth for any obstructions.
A for airway, B for breath, C for circulation…
Her airway was clear, but she still wasn’t breathing. I placed the first two fingers of my hand against her neck and felt the faintest thump of her heartbeat under the pads of my fingers. If she had a pulse, she must have been breathing recently, which meant she still had a chance. I placed my hand on her forehead, tilted her head back and covered her mouth with mine.
I blew a long, slow breath into her lungs, then tilted my head to the side and watched her chest fall. I turned back to her mouth and breathed into her a second and third time. My fingers went back to her neck and verified her pulse was still there before I breathed for her in another three-breath segment.
It didn’t take long, thankfully. I was exhausted, and there wasn’t much chance of me being able to continue resuscitation for very long. If she had needed chest compressions, we were going to be in a lot of trouble. After only a dozen breaths, she coughed, sputtered out more water, and then took several gasping breaths before passing out across my lap. At least she kept breathing on her own, and her pulse felt a lot stronger.
I took a couple of deep breaths for my own lungs and turned my face up to the sky with my mouth open, drinking in the rain drops and hoping the raft was set up to automatically start collecting the fresh water. I was going to have to check that before I did anything else. Fatigue now was bad, but it was still better than dehydration later. I figured I would locate John Paul and the better equipped lifeboats when the sun rose, but I didn’t want to be wrong.
Thankfully, the water collection did seem to be set to go, I just needed to attach a little collection tube from the built in gutter in the ceiling of the raft to the plastic collection bag inside. I pulled the canopy over the top part of the raft; sealing it and leaving just a small part open so I could bail out the water that had already gotten in from the rain and the waves.
I was feeling a little dizzy and figured I wasn’t going to be able to do much more. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to just sit down for a minute. The thing was, if I did stop, that would be it. I’d be out in a second, and if I didn’t do the important stuff first, we were both going to die before I woke up.
I looked back over to the girl I pulled from the water and heard myself gasp as I saw red marks all over the floor. I reached to her and turned her over, checking her back, under her hair, and up and down her limbs, but I didn’t see any sign of injury. While I was laying her back down, I saw a drop of red fall and hit her shoulder, so I reached up to my own forehead.
I guess I hadn’t noticed it, since the rain and sea water kept washing the blood away, but there was a pretty good gash on my left temple. It probably wasn’t too serious, though still worthy of stitches. Head wounds meant blood, so there was a lot of blood. I dug around in one of the sealed pouches until I found first aid supplies. I covered up the cut with some gauze and tape. Hopefully I’d find John Paul in the morning so he could stitch it up. Like I needed another scar. At least it was up near my hairline and would probably be covered up most of the time.
I checked myself over for any other injuries but didn’t see anything. I took a quick inventory of what was on the life raft and found two thin pieces of cloth that were probably supposed to be used as both towels and blankets. Maybe even sails, though they weren’t big enough to make any difference at sea. I used one to dry off the floor in the back of the raft and pulled the drenched girl back away from the raft’s opening, near the dry spot. I tried to make her at least look comfortable, and as I moved her arms and legs so she didn’t look too awkward, it briefly registered that the passenger I pulled from the water was the early-rising bookworm. Of course, now that I had pulled her over to the dry side of the raft, it wasn’t so dry anymore.
Fuck it.